


feel you so close to me

by telm_393



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Amaya-centric, Canonical Character Death, Episode: s02e11 Turncoat, Extended Scene, F/M, Falling In Love, Grief/Mourning, Huddling For Warmth, Introspection, Protectiveness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-27
Updated: 2017-07-27
Packaged: 2018-12-07 12:17:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11623362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/telm_393/pseuds/telm_393
Summary: Nathaniel is freezing, and the feelings that flood Amaya as she holds him are almost too much to bear.





	feel you so close to me

**Author's Note:**

> Look, I have a fondness for Nate and Amaya together, and I just wanted to expand on one of the most fanfic scenes I have ever witnessed in any show, and on Amaya. Because Amaya's great.
> 
> The title is from "The Nearness of You".
> 
> This fills the "hypothermia" square on my hc-bingo. Edit: also, the "huddle for warmth" square on my trope-bingo.
> 
> Also, I realize Amaya calls Nate both "Nate" and "Nathaniel", but I decided to go with "Nathaniel" for her inner monologue.

Amaya's medical training isn't extensive, but as a member of the JSA, she certainly has some, and really, body warmth as treatment for hypothermia seems rather logical to her.

She doesn't think about it too much, when she strips down, when she tears Nathaniel's ridiculous, historically accurate shirt open. She doesn't think about what she feels for Nathaniel. About the decidedly unprofessional things she thinks about his body and his hair, which she desperately wants to touch, and his pretty eyes and pretty face, his open expressions and careless confidence, his innocent excitement.

He says, "You're not thinking clearly. You’re the one who doesn’t think seals are cute.”

And she would laugh, because it's sweet and funny and him and he makes her laugh too easily, but right now she can’t think of anything but getting him warm. It’s her job to protect him. His teeth are chattering so hard it's a miracle that he's not breaking them, and his skin is so clammy, so much colder than it's ever been the few times she's had a chance to touch him.

_I’m so cold, I’ve never been so cold._

Sometimes Amaya is alarmed at how much she wants to touch him. How often she wants to touch him. But she remembers what he told her about the sexual revolution, and is relieved. At least she’s not sick for wanting a man she doesn’t intend on marrying.

She takes off her dress and unbuttons his shirt and she thinks she had a dream like this once, except without the mortal danger. She banishes the thought, because Nathaniel needs her now, his eyes keep closing and whenever they open they have this lost look to him that makes her breath catch.

He's afraid, under all the bluster, she thinks. She doesn't want him to be afraid—he doesn't have to be.

There's something else in his eyes, something like awe, and he rambles about his attraction to her and she doesn’t have time to feel anything like embarrassment, she just has to keep him talking. She’s a little flattered anyway, and relieved that at least her attraction is not one-sided and pathetic. The moment that she pulls her to him, slaps him to wake him up, desperate, his eyes open so wide and he’s so close and he’s really quite beautiful. He tells her she's pretty, and when he does he sounds like a child, and something inside her softens and melts. She’s not sure if she likes that.

No matter what, his state frightens her. She has to get him warm, and the thought supersedes any other feelings she may have other than worry and a terrible affection. She takes him in her arms and he feels so much lighter than he should, because she knows how solid, how present, he really is.

But with her body pressed against his and comforting nonsense escaping her lips to quiet his confused mumbling, she has never felt so strong.

It's not that she's ever felt weak. She’s a superhero, after all.

It's just that even in the JSA, she usually stood in the back, and when Rex wrapped his arms around her she felt safe. Now, with her arms around Nathaniel, she feels like the savior, like the stronger one. There’s something to be said for both feelings.

She misses Rex, she thinks suddenly, as she wraps herself around Nathaniel even more tightly, hushing him as he lets out little gasps of pain as his numbness turns sharp and freezing. She _misses Rex_ , and tears sting her eyes, but she can't cry. Crying is for people who can afford to be fragile. She keened and sobbed when she saw Rex dead, but that made sense. That's when you can cry, when someone dies. That's the moment that it's right to do so. So she can't cry right now, because no one is dying tonight.

For a moment, she was afraid that he would, when she saw him fall.

Neither of them could do anything to stop it, not even her, though she should’ve been watching him more carefully, because the truth is that Nathaniel is not a fighter.

He doesn't really know how to defend himself, he's just strong enough that it doesn't usually matter. He admitted as much to her, once, that he doesn't really know what he's doing out in the field. That all he has are superpowers and without them he can't really do anything but run half-cocked into danger and get himself killed, but now that he has powers, it's okay.

To him, everything’s okay now that he has powers, and anything’s possible until it’s not. He’s not afraid anymore, he says, but she can see it in his eyes: he is, he just doesn’t want to be.

He's still going to get himself killed, has already overestimated his abilities, and Amaya knows she's going to lose him no matter what. She'll have to go back to the forties someday. It's just easier to run from that, from a world without Rex, when she's time traveling.

She and Rex loved each other passionately, if secretly. It was painful and hypocritical and Amaya couldn't get enough of him. Of the fire, the ecstasy, and then...

They were going to leave the JSA for each other, because at some point the thrill of their affair wore off and what was left was love, though it came as a surprise. They were very alike, the two of them. Measured, but with a reckless streak that ran a mile wide, and a want for each other that they found they couldn't control as they could control everything else. But they were a good team, in the end. They weren’t just willing to risk their lives for each other. They were willing to _change_ their lives for each other.

Amaya misses him. She hurts for him every day, feels this awful, raw anger that only subsides when she's with others, especially Nathaniel. He's like some kind of medicine that calms her, and she knows that around her he's less excitable, more grounded, still passionate and bright-eyed without being scattered and frantic. She can take care of him, protect him, and she likes that. She likes him, though considering everything, just why she’s here, she shouldn't be feeling anything past friendship—in fact, she should be feeling less than friendship—for any man at all.

Even so, it doesn't feel as much like betrayal as she thought having feelings for another man would, whatever it is she feels for Nathaniel. He and Rex are so different, and she knows she will never love anyone like she loved Rex, but why would she? There was only one Rex.

And there is only one Nathaniel, and what they will never have together is so much less charged. So much sweeter. They can be friends. She’s even starting to think they can take comfort in each other and never have to cross the line between friendship and romance, no matter what they really want.

She and Rex weren't friends before they were lovers. There was something between them, something inescapable, from the very beginning, and it turned out that it was true that only death could part them.

Amaya thinks she needed this, after Rex. New people, a new environment, maybe even a man to feel something for, just to realize that Rex wasn't the only man she could ever fall in love with, that her life wasn't over.

That Rex will always be special to her, but he doesn’t have to be everything now that he’s gone.

Amaya has more than she did before, she thinks. She has become part of a team that is more than a team. It's a family. She missed having a family.

These people are ridiculous and dysfunctional and beautiful and Rex was always a jealous sort, but he doesn’t think he’d be jealous of what she has now. That she’s moved along. He wasn't the kind of man who would want Amaya to stay devoted to him even after his death.

She's not that kind of woman, and Rex knew what kind of woman she was, knew her most fundamental parts.

But even though she knows now that she can, probably will, fall in love again, she still can’t fall in love with Nathaniel.

It'll only lead to heartbreak, hers and his, and it hurts her to think of hurting him. She just wants to protect him, curl herself around him and let herself feel the satisfaction of being stronger. Nathaniel is strong in his own way, but he needs her more than Rex ever did, even just as a friend. Someone to watch his back.

(They’re going to break each other’s hearts.)

She's finally let him fall asleep beside her, fingers on his pulse to make sure he really is only sleeping, not slipping away, and she looks at him, his peaceful face, and feels far too much. There’s a warm feeling in her chest that just keeps expanding, a worrying attraction that makes her enjoy how near he is.

It's been some time now, since he got thrown into the river. She sits up and, forcing herself into a headspace more like a nurse's than a woman with a childish crush, pulls the blankets from Nathaniel's body, checks him over, touches him with clinical hands to test if his body really is warm again, as warm as it felt under all those blankets.

He’s just fine, she thinks with some guilty regret, which means it's time to get out from under the blankets, so she does. She pulls them over his shoulders, smooths back his drying hair, looks at his face longer than she should.

_You’re pretty._

She swallows and lets herself brush her lips against his forehead before she exits the tent, and she does not look back.

She can't fall in love with him.

(But neither can she bear to lose him.)

**Author's Note:**

> If it's my lot in life to write Legends of Tomorrow fic that no one will ever read, I will take it with grace. :P


End file.
